


Meant to get hurt

by Pols



Series: Healing [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt Tony Stark, Immortal Tony Stark, Immortality, Infinity Gems, Infinity War, One Shot, Tony Stark Centric, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-22 01:23:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12470348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pols/pseuds/Pols
Summary: Tony had a healing factor, or magical healing if you will, since he could remember. He could heal any injury. But the scars always remained. As did the pain.Or: When you heal so fast that most don't see your wounds, people have no qualm about injuring you.





	Meant to get hurt

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is kinda heavy in the begining. As healing needs wounds to be there. (Though nothing graphic.)  
> But it has a happy ending.
> 
> Inspired by this post: lsunnyc.tumblr.com/post/142260282397/can-we-take-a-moment-to-just-think-about-how

Tony's oldest memory was when he was in Howard's lab when he was two and a half years old.

Howard wasn't happy about it, as he had things to do, but Maria left for one of her charities and told Howard to spend some time with their son. And to not push him off to one of the house staff.

So here Tony was, observing his father while he wielded some things together. Tony loved to observe Howard while he created things and inched closer.

“God help you boy if you get in my way!” Howard warned when he saw it. Tony nodded eagerly, more interested in the process than scared of his father wrath.

Hours passed when Howard thought that his heir could be useful if he was already there. “Here boy, take this”, he said, pushing one of the pieces he wielded together some minutes ago closer to Tony's side of the table. “Be useful and bring it to where the other finished pieces are. Obadiah while be here in a moment”, he explained absent minded and got back to his work.

Tony was eager to help his father and took the piece without reservation. But as he took the piece in his hand, a searing hot pain went through it and he let the piece drop to the floor. Tears spilled from his eyes, but he kept quiet as Howard hated it when he was unnecessary loud.

Howard heard the noise of metal hitting the floor and stomped to the dropped piece. He picked it up in his gloved hands and looked it over for damage. “How useless are you?! Can't you even do such a little thing?! Do you know how much time I spent on this?! You're lucky that it isn't broken!”, he raged while carrying it over himself.

Tony only stood there, cradling his burned hand to his chest and wiping the tears away. 

Howard went back to his sniffling son and gripped the hand Tony was cradling in his own. But instead of seeing a fresh burn, he only saw a scar that looked at least a few weeks old.

“What are you crying about? There is nothing but an old scar here. Pathetic. Go back to your room and stay out of my way. I have no need for pansies here.”

Tony didn't understand. The burn was fresh but indeed looked weeks old. Though it still hurt like any fresh burn did. But before he could say a word he was already shoved out through the door.

Tony went back to his room, letting the tears flow freely and sobbing quietly now that Howard wouldn't see or hear it, grabbing some ice along the way.  
***

Howard's abusive behavior only worsened as time went on. He criticized Tony for every little miss step and hand no qualms in becoming violent. And as he never saw Tony being being injured for longer than a day, he saw it as not too extreme.

Over the years Tony collected dozens of broken bones.

Like when Tony broke a bottle of scotch when he was five and Howard gripped his arms tightly and shook Tony while screaming at him. He broke both of Tony's forearms that day.

Tony realized early on that his healing ability wasn't normal. But he kept quiet about it and told no one as Howard had already enough to complain about Tony. He didn't need being a freak be added to it.

So Tony learned to set broken bones himself, as they would heal crooked if he didn't. (His left middle finger could attest to that.) He learned a routine to destroy evidence if his clothes were soaked with blood. And he became accustomed to always being in pain. 

And if some people asked why he already had so many scars? Tony would tell them that he liked to build stuff, but was still clumsy at it. They always seemed believe it. Or liked the convenient excuse.  
***

Tony learned during his second kidnapping that he would heal even from fatal wounds.

Tony was six back then and when Howard refused to pay ransom to the kidnappers to get his son back they had no qualms to shoot Tony in the head and let his body rot in an abandoned building.

But Tony didn't die. He only lost consciousness and bled a lot, while the wound slowly healed itself. He woke nearly a day later in the dry puddle of his own blood with a pounding head and lost weight. The healing took a lot of energy out of him and burned what little fat he had.

Tony pulled himself together and inspected his head wound. He had two new scars, one on each side of his head. Luckily, in places where he could hide them with his hair, he thought to himself. In a bout of morbid fascination, he went looking for the bullet and took it with him. Afterwards he began his track home. 

Along the way he washed his blood out of his hair in a pond and stole some clean clothes before he knocked at the mansion's door.

Jarvis was so happy to see him that he had tears in his eyes and wouldn't let him out of his sight for the rest of the day. Maria hugged him tightly, before going back to her charities. Howard only commented that he was right not to pay the ransom.

Tony spend the night looking at the bullet.

It wouldn't be the last one he collects.  
***

Tony was so intrigued by his healing that he started conducting experiments on himself. Or would observe the wounds Howard 'gifted' him with closely.

Small cuts would heal over within minutes and without scars. Messier cuts or bigger wounds would take up to an hour and would leave scars. 

Broken bones would be healed within 6 to 12 hours. The aches, especially when it was cold, would never leave, though.

Concussions needed 4 to 6 hours. 

Aftereffects of chocking, like difficulty breathing and vomiting blood, 2 to 4 hours. He would regain consciousness the moment oxygen was available again, no matter how long he was deprived of it.

Internal bleeding/wounds were trickier to measure as he couldn't see when it was healed, only note when he was or wasn't hurting and felt dizzy because of the blood loss.

Fatal wounds were even worse, as he often would loose consciousness without warning, so he couldn't really measure the time or observe the healing. And he couldn't induce it himself as they took to much time.  
***

The only thing he shied away from was amputation or the like. He didn't know if he could regrow body parts or if the wound would only heal over if wasn't needed for survival.

The answer came with his fifth kidnapping when he was twelve. Which also marked the first kidnapping that was conducted for Tony himself and not in exchange for his father's money or inventions.

The kidnappers wanted Tony to build them a few of SI's designs and were delighted to torture him into submission. 

(Tony really hated Howard and his PR team for telling everyone how smart he was and how he helped Howard with his work. Which was lie. He never was allowed to touch anything in his father's lab, especially when he was in it. Everything Tony build to get his father's approval earned him new scars and a screamed reproof to not touch his stuff. 

Howard would still use it later on, though.)

But at least he got the answer for his questions: Teeth would regrow completely after 16 hours. (And Tony could understand why teething babies were so cranky.) Toes after 36 hours.

The emotional damage, though, would never heal. 

And underweight kept on being an issue throughout Tony's childhood.  
*****  
*****

MIT brought a change of pace in terms of healing for Tony, as he stopped being continuously abused by his father at home or his peers at boarding school. 

Not that the people at MIT were less jealous. No, mostly because of James Rhodes.

Rhodey was his room mate and had no malicious bone in his body. So Tony had nothing to fear in his dorm room and his budding best friend kept most of the bullies away from Tony outside of it.

The only times Tony really got hurt anymore was when he was in his private lab. Tony didn't really concerned himself with safety measures, as he would just heal anything that could happen. Yes, it still hurt, but Tony was so used to it, that he didn't really registered it any more.

His lack of care let to the first person inside his personal circle to learn of his ability. (All the kidnappers who thought they had killed Tony probably realized it earlier.)

During his second year at MIT Tony managed to explode himself in his lab. A normal person would most likely have died. But Tony only once again lost awareness, a lot of blood and two fingers on his left (and dominant) hand.

Rhodey walked in one him while he was healing, but Tony managed to stop him before he could call an ambulance.

He was understandably confused as fuck, but after Tony explained it all, he seemed to accept it. (Seeing finger regrow may have helped a bit there, too.)

The horror in Rhodey's eyes when he realized what the matching scars on Tony's head meant afterwards would haunt Tony probably forever.

Rhodey's knowledge of Tony's ability would later on save him from recapture by the Ten Rings. Rhodey knew that nothing the terrorist could do to Tony would kill him. So he promised himself to not stop looking for him in Afghanistan until he found him.  
***

Tony didn't know whether to curse or thank his ability that let him survive the Ten Rings.

At the beginning he sure hated it. The explosion of his own missile and the resulting shrapnel hurt like a bitch, but it wasn't much worse than a bullet to the head.

But the following (unnecessary) operation in the cave without anesthesia was the worst kind of pain he ever felt. 

Tony knew a lot about pain, but getting his sternum ripped open for a game of 'hunt down the shrapnel' was so bad that he wished he could die.

The magnet with the reactor housing would have killed a normal human by slowly poisoning the body, but besides a few side effects from heavy metal poisoning, his body managed to counteract it.

Waterboarding wasn't fun either. He couldn't actually die from lack of oxygen or drowning, but it still felt awful. Additionally, the electric shocks close to his heart that occurred when the water spilled on the battery connected to his chest would have killed a normal man.

But Tony being Tony only got arrhythmia and survived it.

He got to see the bright side of his ability when he realized how he wasted his time, his mind and engineering skills by making weapons. 

He swore to himself to turn his life around after he escaped the Ten Rings. To not be so naive anymore.

And he would escape thanks to his healing ability.

He had no qualms in blowing up the whole camp, considering the only person he wanted to keep alive was Yinsen and he died unnecessary to safe him.

The explosion of his weapons coupled with the jets on the suit propelled him high and far away. The landing was ungraceful and broke his spine.

He wished that in would knock him unconscious but sadly he was wide awake while his spine reconnected all it's parts.

The only bright side of it was that the moment Tony could feel and move his legs again he dug himself out and walked the hell away from the burning camp. 

The walk towards freedom was hell, too. Tony was dehydrated, overheated and malnourished. The healing of all his wounds (broken spine, bullet wounds, cuts, burns, etc.) burned the little fat he had left after the starving he suffered in the cave. So the walk through the desert started burning his muscles for fuel to be able to walk and to heal everything the smoldering heat further damaged.

Tony was never happier to see Rhodey than when he landed with the helicopters to save his ass.

Tony was completely healed after a day. Well, with the exception of the big hole in his chest. But it wouldn't heal unless someone would remove the arc reactor, which no doctor was willing to do considering they thought it would kill him and Tony didn't dare to tell anyone about his healing.

And Tony rather lived with that thing than to operate on himself while conscious.  
***

Building and testing the armor would have proved to be fatal, if Tony were mortal like normal humans, as Tony's brand of recklessness, which was well founded, involved philosophies like 'running before walking'.

Alas, he broke his skull during the first test of the repulsor boots when he smashed into the ceiling with high speed. 

The first test of the finished armor was both thrilling and dangerous. Lacking the consequences Tony didn't wait for diagnostics to fully check the armor but used the first opportunity to _fly_. And what a flight that was. The acceleration would have knocked untrained civilians out after a few seconds, but Tony just enjoyed the adrenaline rush. 

Finally Tony lived, instead of just surviving.  
***

His purpose for his immortal life, as far as Tony was concerned, he found in Gulmira. 

The liberation fight was a completely new way of acquiring wounds. But Tony never felt more alive than during the fight and thanked the heavens for his healing. He finally knew his purpose. He finally found his place in the world and a reason for his unkillable existence. 

“I shouldn’t be alive, unless it was for a reason.” 

Healing all possible injuries only really helped you in life if you're meant to face dangerous situation. It only makes sense, if you're meant to get hurt.

(If fate had gifted him a way to heal PTSD/trauma too, it sure would have been really nice, though.)

Rhodey would have been a better pilot for the armor. But the lack of fear of death made it possible for Tony to risk his life in the most effective way. And to prioritize the lives of the people he tried to help above all else.  
***

The theft of the arc reactor out of his chest by Obadiah didn't really effect him. Sure, the moving shrapnel shredded a bit of his insides until he managed to replace it with the old model, but it was more of a discomfort than anything. 

The theft of the arc reactor and fight with the Iron Monger/Obadiah Stane hurt in ways that didn't had to do with physical wounds. That, he could have dealt with, but betrayal was a whole other can of worms. Not that he didn't count on his healing. The climb to freezing heights, despite the low energy left, he was able to do as the fall would have hurt, but he would have healed. Though thankfully that wasn't needed and he managed to slow down his fall. 

The explosion of the big arc reactor though would have killed a normal guy, as it did Stane, but after 7 hours of healing Tony was as good as new. 

Well, minus the reactor that was still in his body. He had to replace it as it was completely damaged during the explosion.  
*****  
*****

Afterwards Tony invested nearly all his time in being Iron Man and revolutionizing the renewable energy business.

He was so invested in it that the palladium poisoning managed to sneak up on him. Tony was never in any danger of dying of course, but it sure hindered his work. 

He became weaker, he lost weight fast, and he had to fight constant dizzy spells.

The chlorophyll shakes helped a bit, but he feared that when he didn't find a solution fast, his body will so weak that he will just fall in a coma and never wake up again, unless someone manages to replace the palladium without his help. 

He could have slowed down his decline by not using the armor or at least using a secondary arc reactor outside his body to power it, but that would have needed a reconstruction of the armor. That would have caused to many questions from others as to why, and he wasn't willing to tell anybody. 

For the same reason he didn't dare to use an outside energy source to power the magnet inside him, like a wall plug, as being connected via outside power cable would have caused questions by Pepper. As well as flashback to when he was connected to a car battery.

Just taking the arc reactor out and letting the shrapnel shred his heart was out of question, too.  
***

Vanko was an unpleasant surprise, just like every surprise connected to Howard. But he managed to defeat him fairly easy, considering he didn't even had to consider a (too) suicidal plan. Unless you consider fighting 'Whiplash' outside the suit suicidal. But really, that was tame in comparison of what maneuvers he pulled in the past. 

And what he will do in the future.  
***

Also, he manged to replace the arc reactor core with synthesized vibranium. 

(Howard for once in his life helped him. The video was still total bullshit. Greatest creation, _sure_... Either Fury tampered with a video or Howard was the right amount of drunk to be slightly sentimental that he thought complimenting future Tony would work better than insulting him to get Tony to continue his work. Either way, they were empty words.)  
*****  
*****

His first fight with an alien(!) was very anticlimactic. Even though Loki thought himself as something better, stronger and godly, he posed no threat to Tony. Tony didn't even had to heal a single wound from their first encounter.

His second fight with an alien(!!!) was more interesting. He fractured slightly his ribs, courtesy of getting hit by Thor's hammer. Twice. Then he was electrocuted a bit courtesy of, once again, Thor's hammer. Thor's head packed quite a whump, too, as he gave Tony a slight concussion. But Tony's suit protected him from most of the harm. And he managed to go toe to toe with a 'god'. Which felt incredible.

He nearly got his chance against a super soldier, too. Captain America. Howard loved to compare Tony to him and it seemed that Tony would finally get the chance to test who's really better. Though duty called before it could go beyond words. (That happened years later, when Tony hadn't expected it.)

Instead, Tony learned how it felt to be in a blender. The rotor of helicarrier did quite a number on the suit and worsened Tony's concussion and fractures. All the healing his body did had to start again from the beginning. Hopefully without another interruption.

But a interruption came, in form of an army. Made of hundreds of aliens with flying whales?! What the hell?

But first Tony had been choked by a god, who had definitively a stronger grip than Howard, and then thrown through a fucking bulletproof window. He thankfully didn't get to test how long it would take to heal being a smear of brain matter, bones, innards, and blood as Jarvis managed to catch him with the experimental armor before he met the ground. But being encased in a skintight metal armor hurt like a bitch when the skin had been forced to break through few inches of glass, which afterwards embedded itself in his skin. 

The fight with the alien army was brutal with all kinds of injuries but nothing compared to a nuke.  
***

When Tony dreamed of going to space when he was a child, he never had imagined that it would be like this. He thought he would explore different worlds, meet friendly aliens and see new exciting tech.

He met aliens, that much was true, but only to hand deliver a nuclear bomb. Which exploded seconds later while he was still close by. Well, he never tested how he would heal from nuclear radiation.

In the aftermath he still dreamed about space, only from then on it was in nightmares. With aliens trying to kill him and enslave humanity, armies that would have obliterated earth with their futuristic weapons and falling from space without air to breath. 

The only relieve he got was building more armors. He feared that it wasn't the last he saw of these aliens and this time he would be prepared.  
*****  
*****

Tony already knew that burns where quite easy to heal when Aldrich Killian decided to pester Tony or Stark Industries for their time and money, like on Sylvester 1999, again.

Sadly for Killian, being hot -literally- wasn't any help for him this time either.

Bombing Tony's house caused Tony to drown, but thankfully Jarvis pulled him out of the water. Walking through snow in freezing temperatures in only a t-shirt and jeans nearly resulted in a few lost fingers, but his body managed to repair the tissue and didn't have to regrow the fingers entirely. Small victories.

Killian threatened to burn Tony on multiple occasions, which left Tony cold (hah) for the most part as the damage would have been painful but easy to mend. But it was nice in the end that Killian didn't have the chance to learn about Tony's healing. That would have only resulted to Tony becoming his next test subject. Not for long of course, considering he managed to escape all his captors on his own till now, but leaving his DNA to be experimented on was not on Tony's agenda.

The final fight against Killian caused a lot of damage to Tony's suits but not really to himself. But whatever, at least he now had the excuse to build a shit ton of new suits when he couldn't sleep.

Especially as he didn't manage to save Pepper from falling into the fire. 

He caught her, but lost his grip and fell with her. Both thankfully survived, Tony because of his natural healing ability and Pepper because of Extremis. Both were gaping at each other when they managed to walk it off shortly after 'landing'. Though Pepper's healing factor was faster than Tony's. Tony broke a few bones, but the pain wasn't anything too distracting. Pepper healed in seconds.

Pepper also got to kill Killian. Go her. Maybe they could be reckless together from now on? Seeing as she healed faster than him now. (He even secretively already made an armor for her.)

But first he had to confess to her why he didn't die. It was long overdue. (And kind of remarkable that he even managed to hide it that long from her.)  
***

He stabilized Extremis in Pepper and had finally a good excuse to get rid of the arc reactor. He just told them that it would accelerate his healing so he had a great chance of surviving. (Which only was half a lie. He had a great chance of surviving. 100%. Only it had to do more with his own healing ability and less with Extremis.)

But what a marvel it was to be able to breath freely again.  
***

What his healing didn't let him bounce back was mental _magical_ manipulation, as it didn't actually damage anything physical. Wanda Maximoff was 'nice' enough to let him know that. The vision of his dead teammates would never leave him. He didn't even realize at that time that it was caused by something other than his PTSD, even when hallucinations like that wasn't something he usually experienced. 

What made it so much worse was the fact that if the earth was doomed in whatever way, global alien attack, biblical apocalypse or natural disasters, he would be the last standing. He can't seem to die, so he is doomed to see everyone die instead. 

He is aging in every way that doesn't actually is damaging the body: gray hair, wrinkles, but his bones and organs are all as if he were still 20 years old.

But toxic thoughts, traumatic experiences and guilt were as indestructible as he was.  
***

Case in point: Ultron. The vision crumpled all his defenses, so that fear managed to overwhelm his caution. But who would have guessed that there was an evil alien AI in the scepter, who would manage to overwhelm Jarvis.

The 'possessed' Iron Legion was thankfully easy enough for Tony to disable. With fondue forks. Perks of having build them.  
***

Being strangled by Thor though was less easy to overcome. He thought they were a team who trusted each other. But Thor had no qualms about crushing Tony's throat. While the others simply watched.

He couldn't speak for some time afterwards. Swallowing and breathing were hard too. Not that the others noticed. Or cared.

It was a pattern, Tony later on will realize.  
***

The fight with Hulk in Johannesburg in the Hulkbuster armor was brutal. Hulk stabbed in the back, literally. But Tony couldn't stop and heal the massive hole in his lower back, he had to continue to fight Hulk till he was Bruce again.

The price for it was a massive scar on his back that matched the one in his chest.  
***

Exploding Sokovia with the help of the unibeam caused a large shock wave that rivaled the one he saw as he nuked the Chitauri. Only now he was practically in the center of the explosion.

The shock wave managed to reach his body through the multiple holes the armor sustained during the previous fight and ruptured his ear drums, most of his lungs and a few other internal organs.

At least he wasn't buried alive under the debris in the water thanks to Friday who took over directly after the explosion and managed to fly without getting hit by to many or too large falling debris. Otherwise Friday would have had to find a way to dig him out again and there was no easy way to explain why he would have been gone so long. At least not without making the team mad thinking he skipped helping the Sokovians.

Friday, via the Avalon protocol, also steered the armor afterwards until Tony wasn't bleeding out too badly anymore and his lungs managed to pull enough oxygen again. Working without breathing would have been kinda difficult otherwise.  
*****  
*****

His first, but not last, fight with a super soldier was with James Buchanan Barnes. Though this time it was more in the capacity of the Soviet Assassin 'The Winter Soldier'. He got to test his watch-repulsor, which managed to surpass his expectations and even stopped a bullet from point-blank. Tony had only planned for it to be slowed, so he wouldn't had to heal as much. Sadly it didn't really matter in the end as he still got his cheekbone and pelvis broken.  
****

In the fight at the airport his team was pulling their punches, sadly TeamCap had no such reservations. Wanda threw dozens of cars on him, which caused contusions, broken rips and broken left arm, as well as a concussion. Luckily, all things that Tony had practice walking off.

Why Tony, a long or middle distance fighter, engaged afterwards in a fist fight with Rogers, he doesn't know. But it probably was caused by the concussion.

The biggest damage to Tony did probably Ant-Man. Not physically, no. But Tony always felt safe in his armor. It served as a fortress you first had to fight through to get to Tony. But Ant-Man managed to slip through the small openings of his suit and damage it from within. Tony would not feel safe in there again until he fixed that.

In the chase after Rogers and Barnes in the quinjet Rhodey was hit by friendly fire. Tony felt as if his world collapsed when Rhodey hit the ground with full speed. SHIT. Why couldn't he have been in Rhodey's place? It wouldn't have mattered if Tony would have broken his spine. It was only a bit of pain for less than an hour, probably. But seeing Rhodey unable to walk was worse than any torture.  
***

Physical wounds didn't really matter to Tony, but betrayal hurt the worst in Tony's opinion. They let him reconsider every interaction, every person he met and trusted in any tiny way. And as he craved company, it only hurt him more when he couldn't trust people enough to let his walls down. To not wear one of his masks and keep people on distance.

Caps actions in Siberia hurt therefore immensely. He was supposed to be his friend. Someone who protected people. A hero who _cared_ and didn't hurt others to accomplish his goals.

But Rogers dealt a deadly blow to Tony when he rammed his shield trough the arc reactor and the reactor through his chest. Rogers didn't know that Tony would survive collapsed lungs and internal bleeding and had no reason to expect Tony to have a way to leave the bunker and find civilization without his armor. 

But he simply left.

Tony had to peel himself out of the armor to be able to find a way to get home. He was strong, but moving a 200lb. armor with his muscle only was not possible for more than a few steps. This left him with only a thin suit, made of cloth not metal, to walk through frozen Siberia to the next city. The bunker sadly hadn't had any usable tech to call for help. And Friday wasn't independent enough to look for his on her own as he deactivated anything that could have traced him to Roger's location.

So he walked and run non stop for three days. He had to produce enough heat through movement. He couldn't stop to rest as he would have frozen. 

It wouldn't have killed him but he would only unfreeze until it got warmer. He didn't even know if it got above freezing temperatures there. He may would have gotten the same fate as Rogers when he crashed the plane. Frozen till someone found him and thawed him.

When he finally found a small village, he had lost a few pounds of body weight, a few toes and fingers and had severe frostbite on his whole body.

He broke into a small house in the night, called with their phone to Friday and hid till she piloted a suit to his location. The only sign that he was there was a 50$ bill he left next to the phone to cover the cost for the call.  
*****  
*****

After months of not hearing anything from Thor or Banner they both landed together in front of the compound. (Sadly on the same piece of grass that barely managed to grow again...)

They both came with bad tidings. A war was coming for earth. A war that would let the fight in Manhattan look like a playground fight.

It was the fist time that someone talked about all the scenarios that Tony feared could happen after their first fight with the Chitauri. Only now, it wasn't hypothetical anymore.

A titan called Thanos was behind the attack by the Chitauri back then and he was about to try again. He was immortal, extremely powerful and commanded huge armies with powerful generals. Thanos was trying to destroy all life in the universe to court death, literally, with the help of the infinity stones. He already destroyed countless of planets in this war.

He already got all but one of these stones and was on his way to conquer earth as it had a strategic place in the universe and housed billions of people.

After Tony had a panic attack, considering all his nightmares just became visions of the possible future and he himself became Cassandra from the Greek myth, he asked Thor what they could do and if he knew where the last stone was.

As it happened, the last stone, the aether, was with Thor. It could influence reality and wasn't really a stone but a fluid that liked to posses people, who then could influence reality itself. The downside of it was that it subsequently killed the wielder, as only few things alive could withstand the strain of the aether on its host's body.

Thankfully, Tony wasn't an average being. He was immortal and had an idea.  
***

Tony asked all about what Thor knew about Thanos, his armies and his tech. Every single thing that was known about him. In turn Tony told him about his healing ability.

Tony's plan was risky, but considering all other possibilities had barely any chance of success, they went with it.

Tony would fly to Thanos to kill him personally. But not in a spacecraft, as that would be to big to make it invisible to any radar. No, Tony build an armor that was only a little bit bulkier than his normal ones and that could shield itself from anything.

It had a small compartment for the aether, for oxygen and a little bit of liquid high caloric food and water.

Tony suited up and flew towards Thanos. Asphyxiating directly after leaving the earth atmosphere. The feeling of suffocating was awful, but Tony could survive it. He lost consciousness and was in a form of stasis while Friday piloted the armor to Thanos flag ship.

When they finally arrived, after traveling 37 days non stop, Friday flooded the armor with the bit of oxygen they took with them, gave him food and water through an IV and let him fuse with the aether. 

Then they both went looking for Thanos, infiltrating his ship with ease, helped by bending reality to keep their presence undetected. When Tony finally found Thanos, asleep, he thankfully had the infinity gauntlet on. Tony went to him, gripped the infinity gauntlet with all the other stones already in it and bend reality to his wishes.

He commanded the other infinity stones to his will. And he willed for Thanos to cease existing, for all his voluntary followers to die and the war to end.

The aether did as he wished, triggered all the other stones in an immense explosion and the infinity war finally ended.

And Tony finally found peace knowing that his life served a higher purpose.

The immense energy that was released turned afterwards into matter and with all the matter from the destroyed armies it formed a new star, with new planets of unending beauty around it and full of life.

And Tony? He watched it all happen, at peace and happy.

**Author's Note:**

> So, a slightly open ending. You can choose whether Tony found a way to die and is watching from the afterlife or if he pulled his atoms back together and watched the formation of this system with his immortal life.
> 
> Please let me know how you liked it.


End file.
